The disclosure of this patent document relates to a technology for an air purifier including an air purifier using ultraviolet (UV) rays.
Recently, the quality of air in Korea has been rapidly degraded. For example, air contaminants caused by the rapid industrialization of China cover the Korean peninsula with yellow dust. Thus, the concentration of air contaminants including harmful heavy metals in the air of Korea has exceeded to a worrying degree. Furthermore, the quality of indoor air in many buildings has been degraded by air contaminants such as fine dust, formaldehyde, and airborne bacteria. Thus, a lot of people have been said to suffer from the sick building syndromes with symptoms such as sneeze, cough, fatigue, and dry and sore nose, eyes, and throat.
Such environmental conditions are or can be some of the factors increasing the demand for an air purifier capable of purifying contaminated air. Most of air purifiers which are currently used in common include or can include various filters provided with the air purifiers, and receive the contaminated air and purify the contaminated air by physically filtering or adsorption-filtering contaminant particles through the filters.
Recently, there has been proposed a method which directly sterilizes the air using UV rays or purifies the air through radicals generated by reactions between a photocatalyst filter and UV rays. An example of such an air purification method using UV rays has been disclosed in Korean Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2011-0096258.
Fans used in air purifiers may be classified into axial-type fans and centrifugal fans. The axial-type fans generate air flow in the direction parallel to the rotation axis of an impeller, and a domestic fan may be taken as an example of the axial-type fans. The centrifugal fans may take air flow in the direction of the rotation axis thereof, but discharge air flow in the direction perpendicular to the rotation axis thereof, and a blower fan may be taken as an example of the centrifugal fans. An example of the technique related to the air purifier employing the centrifugal fan has been disclosed in Korean Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2011-0057562.